My Swedish Cousins

I have relatives in Sweden, and this summer one of my cousins, with his family, is coming to California for a visit. He came probably about 15 years ago, before he was married. My parents went to Sweden a few years ago to visit him and all the other relatives there. They were so kind and hospitable, that my parents want to do everything possible to make their stay here as wonderful as the Swedish relatives made their Sweden trip.

My parents are picking them up in SF, showing them around there, taking them to Monterey, Cambria (where they have a vacation house), bringing them over to Fresno, showing off Yosemite, and taking them to Southern California to see Disneyland, Universal Studios and stuff. While they are in town here, I'll have them over to my house one night and give them a tour of the lake. Not quite on the scale of the rest of the activities, but still a nice way to spend a summer evening.

My cousin, Ulf, does speak English, but his wife struggles with it. The oldest of their 3 children, who is school age, does know some English, but their 2 pre-school girls don't know any English. My parents want to be able to speak to them, so they ordered the Swedish cds from Rosetta Stone to try to learn some. While some of the words are slightly recognizable, others are totally bizarre. "Bol" is ball....not so bad. But airplane is something that sounds like "fleegplahn"....which I probably have wrong. I'm proud of them for trying, but when my cousin called last week to confirm their plans and my dad tried out some of their new words, my cousin had NO idea what he was saying! LOL

Anyway, even if I don't know any Swedish, I'm sure I will enjoy their visit, and that they will too.